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Brian Wilson re-creates his lost masterpiece Get Happy BRIAN WILSON Never mindPet Sounds. Good record, but a totem. That leavesthree great Beach Boys albums. First comes a fun-fun-fun best-of: Withthe canonicalEndless Summer deleted, settle for 2003's longer,less pristineSounds of Summer. The other two are quickies thatfit neatly on one must-own CD: BuySmiley Smile/Wild Honeywhile EMI lets you. Smiley Smile andWild Honey get respect now, but in1967 they peeved hard-corePet Sounds fans, who were waitinggape-mouthed forSmile, described by those in the know as theAmericanSgt. Pepper--proof that our Bea-boys belonged in thesame league as their Bea-boys. But Brian went bonkers, Mike Love gotbusy, and we ended up with only "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes andVillains"--stopgap singles that made it onto the belittlingly titledSmiley Smile--and dribs and drabs thereafter. Only you know what happened? Brian Wilson survived his sanerbrothers and rebuilt his career, which the completely rerecordedSMiLE is supposed to crown. Since much of Wilson's 2004Gettin' In Over My Head could have been sung from a crypt, thisseemed like a terrible idea. Instead, it's a triumph. SMiLE began as a concert concept for Wilson's expertalt-rock road band, which by 2002 had exhaustedPetSounds. Never completed,SMiLE existed only as a jumble ofalternate versions, song fragments and ill-cataloged tapes. Siftingthrough these was a collaborator as crucial as lyricist Van DykeParks: keyboard player, harmony vocalist and "musical secretary"Darian Sahanaja. With Sahanaja and Parks jogging his memory, Wilsonrevised and composed until the best pieces formed a forty-seven-minutewhole that started shortly before "Heroes and Villains" and climaxedwith "Good Vibrations." While no symphony, it cohered and flowed. Thesparer, simpler recorded version follows the pattern of theecstatically reviewed live performances. Anchored by deft quotes andthematic repetitions,SMiLE is beautiful and funny, goofilygrand. It's looser and messier thanSgt. Pepper and, onesuspects, always would have been. But its sui generis Americanismcounterbalances its paucity of classic pop songs. Not in the sameleague--just ready to play a World Series. Although Parks is a well-traveled arranger who must have left somemarks on Wilson's music during their hash-fueled 1966-67 brainstormingsessions, his words do the talking. They're poetic in a manner Wilsonhas no gift for: now idiomatic, now archaic, now obscure, pervaded byimages of fleeting youth and a frontier that stretches toHawaii. Although stoned confusion and mild pastoral pessimism areendemic, the world they evoke is as benign as a day at the beach--yetless simplistic (and deceptive) than the Beach Boys' fantasies ofeternal Southern California teendom. In this the lyrics are of a piecewith the jokey songlets ofSmiley Smile, where fiveSMiLE titles first surfaced, and the good-natured rock &roll recidivism ofWild Honey. What elevates them intosomething approaching a utopian vision is Wilson's orchestrations:brief bridge melodies, youthful harmonies more precise and upliftingnow than when executed by actually existing callow people and anenthralling profusion of instrumental colors. Trombone, timpani,theremin and tenor sax brush by and disappear; a banjo shows its head;strings vibe around; woodwinds establish unexpected moods and pipedown. That the pros who surround Wilson are up to all of this isgratifying but not startling. What the auteur himself had in him wasmore questionable. And that's the central miracle of this gift ofmusic. Wilson's voice has deepened and coarsened irreparably. Althoughhe hits the notes, he can't convey the innocenceSMiLE'scontent seems to demand. But he can convey commitment andbelief--belief that his young bonkers self composed a work thatcaptured possibilities now nearly lost to history.SMiLE provesthat those possibilities are still worth pursuing. Rolling Stone, Oct. 14, 2004 | |
